


Chattel

by brightephemera



Series: Leif Surana [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Golems, Regrets, aeducan mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27270205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightephemera/pseuds/brightephemera
Summary: Leif admits why she accepted a man who permitted a slave trade. The truth is no more flattering, but is rarely simple. (Setting: Early in Amaranthine, after Original Campaign)
Relationships: Loghain Mac Tir & Female Surana, Loghain Mac Tir & Warden
Series: Leif Surana [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1954573
Kudos: 2





	Chattel

Leif flounced into the war room. She rarely merited that verb, and it didn’t bode well.

She planted her staff. “Somebody else started it today.”

Loghain set down the map marker and looked up from the war table. Plans scattered. “Started what?”

“Calling me a traitor because I forgave you selling elves into slavery.”

“Ah. Did you?”

“No.”

“So are you, in your opinion?”

“Aren’t you a cool customer. You let slavers in so you wouldn’t have to deal with a neighborhood you didn’t want to defend.”

“Substantially true.”

“In fact I’m the only reason you sent reinforcements to the alienage at all.”

“I didn’t send them, when it came down to it. You did.” He remembered that session well, and so did every allied army’s commander in Denerim.

“You enslaved some and would have abandoned the rest, and I took you and trusted you.”

“You seem satisfied with these facts.”

“Loghain, I abhor slavery. And I abhor people who prey on the desperate and the lonely. I could have thrown you to—the wolves.” Alistair, but she never said his name. Alistair would have cut him in two in front of the Landsmeet and strode forth to muddle through the city’s defense alone. “I didn’t.” She was too smart for that. “And I can’t say I’m better, because….” She swallowed and looked away.

“Leif?” He had never seen her literally refuse to face something. “What’s the matter?”

“Did I tell you about Orzammar?” she creaked. Her restless energy stilled. It was the freeze she showed when she heard a loud noise.

He walked past her to close the door. “Sit,” he said.

There were no chairs at the war table but there were benches bolted to every wall. Leif walked slowly to one and sat down hard.

Loghain did not sit. “What were you saying about Orzammar?”

“A golem is made from a person, Loghain. That’s how they get their life. They sacrifice their own volition to power what looks like a vehicle.”

“Fascinating.” Possibilities burst into flower. “Is that the only secret? If people are not the limiting factor, how quickly can they be made? When you say they give up their volition, is their control truly a matter of a rod and a word?”

“Don’t get excited. It isn’t simple, it isn’t fast, and it isn’t right. Do you think Bhelen Aeducan would take a tool like that and use it with restraint? I’ve heard the reports. His enemies have started disappearing, and golems just keep showing up. He’s forcing undesirables into becoming his personal army.”

“And that is the price you paid to get golems to Denerim.”

“Exactly.”

“Well done.”

“Don’t.” She looked pained. “I wish I’d done anything to get that result for the Wardens without the benefit for him.”

“Does he deserve no reward for his assistance?”

“Honor and a sincere thank-you are rewards. Slave constructs are not. I just don’t know what I could have done differently.”

He thought about his daughter, a scant year or three older. He had tried to teach her what he knew of statecraft, but he had never told her to do the unsavory things. She had advisors for that. Like him.

Leif requested no such insulation. “Assuming that the first few are earmarked for you? Leave spies to assassinate the Paragon who builds them when those are done,” he said. “Or slow poison. Prop up the royal candidate who doesn’t know how to make them. Coerce the Paragon, I’m sure you have ways. Disrupt production, then send your loaned golems to do the most dangerous jobs here on the surface and return as little as you can to Orzammar. Or just keep them by royal decree.”

“That’s incredibly bad faith.”

“You don’t want him to have his golems. You’re starting in bad faith.”

She bit her lip. She had thawed, at some point, had reacquired her nervous energy. “Where were you when I was making these decisions?”

“In my fortress, sending assassins after you, like any self-respecting tyrant. I did not have the luxury of golems.”

“Uncontrolled…proliferation…is not a good thing, Warden-General.”

“As if you could say their lives are more worthwhile, Warden-Commander?”

“Yes! A life is more worthwhile than an existence as monster on a leash!”

“Any life? Do you know nothing of these alienages you were so tenderly protecting? Ask the most wretched of them whether they would want to be reborn as something with power.”

“We’re not converting the alienage, Loghain.”

“No, of course not. It’s funny you should mention it.”

“I stopped you selling slaves. I’d do it again, and forgive less. I think that I did the wrong thing when I granted golems to Bhelen, and you’re not going to convince me otherwise.”

“Very well. Do I still have a place in this conversation, or do you have the rest of it sorted out?”

“Maybe I am a traitor to elves for not punishing you. I know I am a traitor to every lower-caste dwarf who I should have protected.”

This was exactly the kind of blithering Loghain had hoped to see end when the bard left Amaranthine. “Leif. You’re not going to believe me, because I am guilty of the one and quite willing to take advantage of the other. But you cannot be loyal to the entire world at once. The Grey Wardens’ responsibility is against the Blight. Anything that serves that is desirable. Anything that weakens your stance is dishonorable at best and suicidal at worst.”

“You think that?”

“To my core. I believe you do, too, somewhere under the doubt and the desire for popularity. You allowed an injustice, perhaps two. Sparing my life. Building your warriors. Your justification is that the archdemon died. There is nothing further to say.”

“There is no archdemon anymore. What happens now?”

Loghain thought about that.

“Put on the kid gloves if you want,” he said slowly. “Draw yourself as a hero, and if you don’t there are those who will do it for you. Personally, I’ve stopped selling elves.”

“Promise me that,” she said fiercely.

“What good is my promise to you?”

Leif slumped with the elasticity of youth. “Of course. Forget it.”

He looked at her. For a second he felt like that wasn't the answer she'd wanted to give. Foolish thought, that. He had a job here, one that she had done her best to sanitize. He moved on.


End file.
